Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles

What: Tijuana’s pro soccer team that recently gained promotion to the Primera Division, Mexico’s top league. The mascot, the Xoloitzcuintles (or Xolos for short), is a Mexican hairless dog.

Where: Estadio Caliente, on the grounds of the Agua Caliente race track and casino, in the hills above downtown Tijuana. The stadium currently seats 16,000, with immediate expansion plans to 20,000 and future expansion to 33,000.

Schedule: The 17-game Apertura season opens Saturday at 5 p.m. against Morelia. The top eight in the 18-team Primera Division advance to the playoffs, or liguilla, in mid-November. The Clausura half of the season begins in early 2012.

Tickets: Single-game seats for Saturday’s soldout opener range from 160 to 280 pesos ($14 to $24). Season tickets for the Apertura half of the Mexican season, which includes nine home dates, start at 1,480 pesos ($128). They’re available at Xolos outlets in Tijuana or on the Mexican version of Ticketmaster.

Getting there: Estadio Caliente is a 10-minute drive from the international border, or about a $6 taxi fare. The club is also trying to arrange bus service from San Ysidro on game days.

TV: Games throughout the season will be aired on Tijuana affiliates of Mexican networks Televisa and TV Azteca, as well as Spanish-language Univision and Telemundo in the U.S.

History: Founded in 2007, the Xolos became the first Tijuana club to reach the Primera Division last May, prevailing in a two-game playoff against Irapuato for promotion from the second-division Liga de Ascenso. The Xolos are run by president Jorgealberto Hank and vice president Gog Murguia, the sons of influential Tijuana businessmen Jorge Hank Rhon and Alberto Murguia Orozco.

D Juan Pablo Santiago 30 The veteran has been a regular with Veracruz, Atlas and Santos.

Two weeks after the Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente gained promotion into Mexico’s prestigious Primera Division for the first time in the city’s history, this happened:

Jorge Hank Rhon, the team’s godfather of sorts, was jailed after an early-morning raid of his compound adjacent to the Xolos stadium. It involved 100 Mexican policemen and uncovered 88 firearms, including two that allegedly were linked to recent murders. Rhon’s son, Jorgealberto, is the team president, and Hank Rhon is widely believed to have bankrolled the club and its stadium.

Not exactly the ideal start for the club’s most important offseason ever.

But charges were ultimately dropped against Hank Rhon, and the Xolos – a Mexican hairless dog – trotted forward without, excuse the pun, losing any hair. The team continued stadium upgrades, kept rival Primera Division clubs from raiding the key pieces of the squad that gained promotion, and did not skimp on new signings.

The opener is Saturday at 5 p.m. at Estadio Caliente, and the Xolos do not ease into the rigors of the 18-team Primera Division. They get the Morelia Monarchs, who lost to Pumas in the Clausura final last spring and have been one of Mexico’s most successful teams over the past decade.

Xolos coach Joaquin del Olmo isn’t blinking, or gulping.

“We built a team to survive the day-to-day needs and to fight for a slot in the postseason,” del Olmo said. “We are focusing on Morelia right now, but I have a good team that can face anything.”

There are plans to build both. Construction began on a 4,000-seat section behind the north end last spring, and light towers have been erected but without lights yet.

For the time being, then, most games will be played on Sundays at noon. Saturday’s opener was moved to 5 p.m. today for television because there’s still enough natural light. The game should end about an hour before sunset, but 5 p.m. kickoffs won’t be possible in another month or so unless they want to play in the dark.

The squad

Del Olmo was smart. He built his team from the back, spending his limited budget last season to assemble Primera-caliber defense instead of splurging on high-priced attackers who may or may not produce.

The result was the Liga de Ascenso’s stingiest defense, allowing a mere 25 goals in 33 games. It also meant that when promotion came, he didn’t have to worry about reshuffling his back line, where communication and familiarity is tantamount to talent and athleticism.

So captain Javier Marcelo Gandolfi, Richard Ruiz, Alejandro Molina and Joshua Abrego were all kept, along with goalkeeper Adrian Zermeno.

The big changes are in the attack, most notably Colombia’s Dayro Moreno, Tijuana native Fernando Arce and Brazilian-born Leandro Augusto. The Xolos outbid Portugal’s Sporting Lisbon to pry the highly-touted Moreno from Colombian club Once Caldas for a reported $3.5 million. Arce, 31, came from Santos Laguna to close out his career in his hometown. Leandro joined Tijuana after a decade at Mexico City’s Pumas.

All of the new signings will be available Saturday except for Moreno, who just arrived after playing for Colombia in the Copa America, and Egidio Arevalo, who is still there because Uruguay is in the final.

A single table

The Primera Division, after years of convoluted group play and confusing playoff qualification, is going European. Teams are now organized in a single 18-team table, with the top eight making the playoffs (or liguilla) at the end of both the Apertura and Clausura halves of the campaign.

The postseason, too, will be different. Instead of a single-elimination bracket, teams will be put in a pair of four-team groups with everyone playing everyone else home and away – or six games per team. The top teams from each group would advance to a two-leg final.

That increases the number of playoff games over the Apertura and Clausura seasons from 28 to 52, which means 24 more games to televise, which, of course, means more money.

Avoiding the drop

Good news: Only one team is relegated from the Primera Division each year, not three like in many European leagues.

Bad news: It’s based on average points per game over the last three seasons, meaning recently promoted teams have a much smaller margin for error. One decent year out of the three is usually enough to keep you safe and offset poor seasons; for newcomers, though, one clunker and you’re gone.

Ask Necaxa, which was promoted in 2010 and relegated in 2011. It won just seven of 34 games and finished with 31 points (you get three for a win, one for a tie, none for a loss) for a per-game average of .9118.

Queretaro, promoted in 2009, enters the campaign with an average of 1.0882 – or roughly 37 points over the Apertura and Clausura seasons combined. That means somewhere in the mid-40s, and perhaps even lower, should guarantee the Xolos another year of life, and hope, in the Primera.